I think the tragic feeling is invoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing -- his sense of personal dignity.

Today, [theatre's] more likely to be consciously not aimed at the public, but at a more sophisticated or educated public. . . . The result is that some of the sheer humanity has leaked out of the enterprise.

The famous are balloons far up in the sky, to be envied for their quiet freedom or shot down as enemies.

Great drama is great questions or it is nothing but technique. I could not imagine a theater worth my time that did not want to change the world.

The theater is so endlessly fascinating because it's so accidental. It's so much like life.

For the political world, I have come to believe, is fundamentally beyond anyone's control, yet we all go on as though it were a kind of vehicle that only needs a change of drivers in order to steer it away from its frequent hair-raising visits to the edge of the cliff.

I'm the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.